About

Healthy Workplace Initiative

The Healthy Workplace Initiative supports the creation of workplace health for all staff. The initiative is based on current research and leading practice on health and well-being within organizations, particularly healthcare. The Healthy Workplace Team’s goal is to support a healthy and enjoyable place to work.

This is a big place which makes communication and connection big challenges. Improving access to and availability of health and wellness information, resources and services for staff and their families is one of our main goals. We have developed a number of strategies to reach you wherever you are and keep us all in the loop!

The Healthy Workplace serves as a hub for employee health and wellbeing and coordinates a variety of classes and other ongoing programming, events, initiatives, and learning opportunities. This inlcudes an array of supports such as wellness tips, stretching videos, challenges, 12-week Healthy Lifestyle Challenge, and other fitness and lifestyle resources

What Is A Healthy Workplace?

A “healthy workplace” considers all aspects of an employee’s life, and works to respect and protect every individual in the organization. While each workplace has its own unique character and individuals often define health in different terms, there are some things that we all want. For the Saskatoon Health Region, a healthy workplace:

is safe, supportive, positive and energizing

respects the dignity and worth of all

values diversity

encourages collaboration and honest and meaningful dialogue

promotes kindness and nurtures a well-balanced lifestyle

is environmentally sustainable

We all want and deserve to work in a healthy, safe, vibrant workplace. And we all share the responsibility of creating such an environment–each one of us as individuals, and leadership at all levels has a role to play.

As people in the caring profession, we know inside that we can’t care well for others when we’re not well ourselves. The key to thriving in our workplaces is by taking care of ourselves and each other. Wellness helps us to be resilient in the face of constant change. You’ve heard the saying “you can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.” Developing our resilience – our “bounce” factor, helps us to stay healthier, stronger, better able to ride the waves, as individuals and as a team. This doesn’t mean that other factors in the work environment are not important, but a first step is building your own wellness shield.

We create this kind of supportive environment together by paying attention to and caring for our own health and wellness, and by nurturing our relationships and our working environment, and taking positive action where we can.

Our initiatives are designed to increase individual skills and resiliency, as well as to facilitate organizational change to better enable departments, units and teams to develop and maintain healthy workplaces, as part of the Authority’s focus on Better Teams.

Why Does It Matter?

We typically spend more waking hours at and commuting to and from work than we do anywhere else. Many things influence an individual’s experience of well-being, and with so much time on the job, what happens at work can affect our overall health. A healthy workplace fosters employee well-being while improving organizational performance, and ultimately providing the highest quality of care and service, so everyone wins when health is a priority.

A healthy workplace…

…works for employees. Healthy jobs and workplaces contribute to an individual’s physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being.

…works for the organization. When people feel valued, respected and satisfied in their jobs and work in safe, healthy environments, they are likely to be more engaged in, productive and committed to their work.

…works for patients, clients, residents and families. A healthy workforce in healthy work environments helps us to be a healthy organization that has patients, clients and families at the center of care and service.